Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone Review: The Most Fleshed Out, Fun, and Polished RPG to Date

We all know that Com2uS’s games are getting better and better in terms of quality, but the one major category that they haven’t been able to succeed in is a traditional Eastern style RPG game. However, all that changes with the release of their new title, Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone. This RPG has it all; diverse active and passive skills, five classes, tons of items, a party system, and even an online arena battle function. As you can see, this game greatly improves upon Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor, which was Com2uS’s first attempt at an RPG.

Almost everything about this game is great. The animations are smooth, the weapons and armor all have different appearances, and the amount of content is unbelievable. I beta tested the game and previewed it some time ago, and I still haven’t finished it yet. Suffice to say, Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone nails down all the aspects of a good RPG, with a spectacular online mode to boot.

Likes

Party System: In the game you can control a party of up to three characters. Never before have I seen this done on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and I think Com2uS nailed it down on the first try. You can control any member in the party by tapping their icon once in the top left hand corner of the screen, and you can order party members to attack or retreat with you by double tapping the member that you are currently using.

If a party member dies, you switch to another member and can pick the fallen one up. I found that the transition from one party member to another was very fluid, and there were no jumpy frames whatsoever.

For the most part, the other members of the party follow your character seamlessly. However, they sometimes get trapped when you’re turning around corners, so it is a tad annoying having to go back so they can catch up again. This is my only fault with the party system – the party members aren’t smart enough to go around obstacles if they’re left behind.

Online Matchup: Another element that has never been implemented on an iPhone and iPod Touch RPG is an online function. Once again, Com2uS implements another new function almost perfectly. From the main menu if you select “Matchup Mode” you’ll enter into an area that’s the outside of the arena. In this area there is an inn where you can rest up, and a General Store where you can buy potions and other items for your party.

To enter into an online matchup battle you’ll have to walk to the gate, where you’ll receive a prompt for a fee to enter. If you confirm that you will pay the fee, you will almost be immediately matched up with another person’s party near your level. Many people are mistaking that they are fighting real people, but in reality they are in combat with another person’s party that’s AI-controlled – that’s how smart the AI is. It’s quite a challenge trying to defeat the opponents, and oftentimes you will not be able to get more than one victory unless you have lots of potions. Even a Priest in your party won’t cut it, as the strongest opposing party member will often target her first.

The matchup mode also has some nice rewards, as every battle you win will gain you Honor Points and possibly random items or random boxes. The Honor Points can be used to buy rare items such as alchemy ingredients that are very difficult or nigh impossible to find in-game. This is a great motivation for people mid-game to play the online mode, since they’ll want the best items and ingredients to create unpurchasable items that cannot be acquired through stores or monster drops.

Alchemy Feature: In the General Store there’s a globe that can be used to combine alchemy items such as scrolls and ethers with a recipe or piece of equipment to create useful things such as potions and unacquirable weapons and armor. This feature may motivate players to grind and find the alchemy items or recipes, which is nice for both the developer and player – the game boasts more play time and the player levels up more and gets good equipment and more potions.

Equipment Appearances: All armors and weapons are aesthetically different, and after I buy a ton of new equipment for my character and mercenaries it’s quite nice to see that they look more badass in their new gear. Armor, shields, and weapons look different, but your characters will not show helmets, gloves, boots, rings, or necklaces. Overall I think that only choosing to show these three items was for the better, as I don’t want my characters to seem like they’re wearing so much different stuff, but I still want them to look cool and able to dish out some serious damage.

Content and Replayability: The game has tons of content, and I estimate going through the single player mode once will take anywhere from 10 to 30 hours based on the player. In addition, there’s a huge replayability factor because you’ll want to mess around with other party possibilities and characters, and the online mode will have you competing for the number one spot on the leaderboards.

Dislikes

Lack of Auto-Save: Let’s face it, most of us have been spoiled and expect auto-saving to be in all of our games. Well, apparently this game is an exception as you have to manually save your progress. I, for one, don’t think this is a bad thing as I’m used to frequently saving and find that it’s useful to not have auto-save if I mess up somehow. However, the majority will not like having to manually save frequently to make sure they don’t lose their progress, so I think Com2uS should add an optional auto-save feature to the game.

Selling Items: The store merchants are misers, and will offer you outrageously low prices for pieces of good equipment, so the only way of earning gold is by killing monsters. Thankfully, the monsters drop an adequate amount, but I find it weird that my Level 29 weapon I acquired sells for less than what I get if I kill 20 Slimes. The store price for selling weapons should be tweaked, as there isn’t much motivation to pick up items if they’re only going to fetch 50 or 60 gold in the stores.

Mercenarary Management: There’s really no obvious way to dismiss mercenaries from the party, so one has to carefully consider if they want to hire one or not. Obviously on the first playthrough people won’t be aware of this, and will get annoyed that they finally have a Warrior Seal they want but can’t use it since they already have three party members.

Difficulty: In the game, some characters are really easy to fight with and some are really hard to keep alive. In reality, most parties should be able to balance out in the single player portion of the game and do somewhat well in a multiplayer function. In this game sometimes it’s very easy to battle through the single player mode with a specific party, but using the same party is almost impossible to win on online matchup, and vice versa. It’s not that big of a deal, but a little better balancing would be nice.

There aren’t enough words to describe how good this game is. If you’ve been searching over and over for a fleshed out, fun RPG that provides great features and an amazing experience, Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone is the game for you. Even at its $7.99 price tag, I have to say that it should be an instant buy for most iPhone and iPod Touch gamers.

Any RPG fan will love Com2uS’s new game Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone. The party system is easy to understand and easy to manage and there are no difficulties or problems interchanging between mercenaries. There is an online matchup mode that requires a small fee and will pit you against other people’s parties around your level, but will give you rewards that are rare or hard to find in game. An alchemy feature is included that allows you to use recipes to create new items and buff up equipment, and most major pieces of equipment will register aesthetically on your character. Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone is something all RPG or action game fans should have. The hefty $7.99 price tag is something that you should deliberate on, as the content, playtime, and replayability for the game is something you definitely don’t need to worry about.

27 thoughts on “Inotia: A Wanderer of Luone Review: The Most Fleshed Out, Fun, and Polished RPG to Date”

The story does get a bit overshadowed or forgotten, as you tend to forget it when you’re doing all the quests from town to town. However, the story itself is the standard RPG fare about a party of heroes trying to combat some evil lord that’s broken free of his prison. The story isn’t anything riveting, and tends to get lost amongst all the things you’re doing, so I didn’t include it as either a like or dislike. Hope that helped!

Awesome review Jeff. However another dislike you may want to add to your review is that you cannot allocate points into the stats of each party member (only the skill tree). Therefore if you’re trying to build the ideal holy trinity its a bit tricky.
On Match-up play, it’s pretty near impossible to win consecutive matches. I can manage only three in a row (priest runs around while oppnents’ knight chases me as i keep healing my party until i run out of mana – too cheap to use any potions as they’re far too expensive). Shop in Match-up play needs to be tweaked a little as it costs 50 honour points just for a magic branch.
When you mentioned that the main storyline gets lost in all the quests, you weren’t joking lol! Side quests are endless, and now im totally stuck which is so annoying (can’t get the magic golem heart even though im in the cave killing loads of them but they still haven’t dropped the damn thing). Some other side quests are really annoying e.g. Frizzy the bear is never in the dungeon when you are, the exotic plant can’t be found in the maze, and yes i got to the deepest part when its a dead end. AARGH!
10 to 30 hrs, NO WAY! Try adding at least another 20 hrs if you want to finish the entire game (all quests), as i’ve probably put in about 20 hrs in and i reckon im probably half way with still loads of side quests to do (legendary monsters are pretty damn tough).
Those taht are wondering what character to choose from the start, i chose the knight as i needed the higher-up skills such as shield mastery (or whatever its called), which when maxed out (level 5) means by blocking rate is pretty awesome. Characters you pick up as party members don’t get all skills. Its pretty damn hard to complete game without a tank (mine has a defense of over 3000)
Overall, this is an awesome game and it reminds me a lot of Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance (i wish they would make a third one). Definitely worth the price tag.
Bloody hell this is long.

BTW, is SEED really that bad? I was so looking forward to it but after your review im a bit skeptical. Is it better or worse than Guardian Soul (i bought it as i needed a RPG fix after Dungeon Hunter)?

Haha, glad to hear that you enjoyed my review. As for the dislike, I found that to be helpful, as there was already a lot of management stuff going on. The match-up is easy IF you buy potions, but sometimes I just get lucky and receive Warrior Seal drops 24/7, earning about 5000 gold in 20 minutes. Once again, that’s a matter of your Luck, and how much you grind.

Yes, the main storyline does get lost easily – I was so wrapped up doing quests I forgot completely about it until I was journeying to a town and General Epsilon knocked down my character and took the package and left. Lol. You can’t find the exotic plant? I found it on my first try, it’s at the end of the maze and is a red flower monster thing.

As for what character I chose first, I picked the Magician since she does an insane amount of damage. My ideal party is two magicians and one knight. I finished the game in about ten hours following ONLY the storyline and no side quests, but when I started doing the side quests that number shot up dramatically to about 40 or 50 hours of play time. So you’ve still got a nice amount of time before the game ends. And yes, the game is definitely worth the price tag.

As for SEED, I played around with it for a while and was just plain disappointed and disgusted with the DLC in the game. I mean, I have to pay 99 cents to be able to automatically pick up items? Lame. I’d have to say it was overall a little worse, but if you count only the gameplay it’s a little better. Though I do advise you to stay away from the game, since you’ll be mostly wasting your hard-earned cash.

I didn’t play it much though, but you can ask Matt on his review, because he had to go through it for some time to be able to write up the article. I feel a little bad for him. =P

Hey Jeff, nice one on the reply. Completed the game and its pretty cool that you get to enter new areas that were locked (e.g. caves and lower dungeon floor of the dragon cave). BUT damn are those monsters hard to kill. I mean, REALLY REALLY HARD. Even the wolves near Luone are almost too tough! Guess its time to do some grinding!
Regarding the exotic plant and Frizzy, i went to the designated areas where once again they were absent, saved the game, closed the app and then opened the game again. Miraculously they appear right in front of you. So if anyone else had this problem try this trick.
Have only 4 more side quests to complete (the Hunter, getting some stuff for the sage, Dragon scales and defeating Higlander).

Regarding SEED, I decided to purchase it. DO YOU KNOW WHY? … because its FREE for some reason! Weird isn’t it? Any ideas as to why this is?

Yeah, I’m not very clear on why they made it free, but I’m guessing their paid game + buy DLC plan didn’t work as well as they thought it would. SEED 1 is alright, but definitely not worth its previous price point.

Matt… your reviews on games you hate have always been so entertaining; I always have to read them. 😛

Perone is at the very bottom of the map and the elf village is to the left of perone. You will have to do a side quest for a man in the elf forest to get some powder that u use on a rock to open the path to the elf village

IMF I love this game eventho it was8buks :). But still can’t figure out where the hek is elf dongeon is..:( I can’t find tat frizzy bear cuz I don’t know where the elf dongeon is.. Can u guys help me? Is it the elf fountain? Oh and how can u get to toria? I found out tat all the roads to toria is blocked.. Is it becuz I didn’t catch frizzy bear? Plz help.. Send me a response to ijeesang@hanmir.com thanks

Oh ppl for the elf village u have to go find the chief in the village tat is right next to the elf village(sorry forgot the name of village). The chief is in the house ithink it was lower left corner or upper left :p

Hey can anyone help me PLEASE. I’m in the dungeon place where Mysertous lady (forgot her name) let me free and left to go talk to Erad. I don’t know how to get out of here! Am I missing something? I can get to like chamber 3 and there was no exit. Please help me escape from this dungeon.

How do you and where do you find the magic golem heart? I’ve been killing everything i can in the memories area and still cant get one. I know its suppossed to look like a piece of darkness but alass no joy pleaze help.

Hi, you all have left great comments and reviews. I’ve read them all and it seems that you guys know Alot. I am having trouble finding the mysterious rock with which I’m supposed to use the fairy dust (already aquired) on. I’d also like to ask of you guys to make a list of your top favorite itouch games. Thanks

Gunslinger6792 magic golems are found in the traces of ruins 1 which is at the lower part of the land of memories but my problem is im killing magic golems but im not getting any magic golem heart plz someone help me !